Collected Poems

by Chuck Guilford

Take It and Go

I mean this warm springwind coming in from Oregon,first over the Cascades then outacross the desert till it’s goodand clean, and the clouds have blownoff north toward maybe Alberta,but what’s underneath and warmkeeps coming on.

And you, having just turned twenty,are prepared, in a sense, for whateverthe wind can offer. How do you get preparedbut to live and suffer love’s despair,to run with your heart in your handlike a trembling flameto yet another sweet destruction?